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Small Victory with learning to play today...

Small Victory with learning to play today or " why to start learning solos as a beginer..."

So I've been working on nothing but Rhythm. Hey I'm not going to play lead so why not focus? I got a good lesson on "why not" and it resulted in one of the small "victories" we all get as we learn.

I got to jam with a bass player and a drummer a couple of months back and the guy that was going to play lead was a no show. We start playing and it's fun but at the time where the solo should happen...I'm just playing the rhythm. The bass player ( who plays everything and teaches - bass, guitar and drums) isn't having any of it! "Play something, that solo is in (Key)" he just wanted me to play SOMETHING. So I tried... It was fine...but I decided right then I needed to start understanding and playing some simple solos. So I started to learn some of the solos to the songs we had played... Maybe I don't have the chops to play it note for note it but I could play SOMETHING.

Well that resulted in learning more techniques! Sliding into notes, hammer pulls, double pull offs, bending to pitch. More good stuff to practice! And it is interesting.

So I'm driving into work this morning listening to "The Black Crows" (who else!) "Struttin' Blues" and during the outtro solo it occurs to me I'm visualizing the moves of the licks he's playing. Slide, hammer pull off, 1/4 note bend...etc.

every moment you spend playing and learning will get you closer to being a better player. all that matters is that you find enjoyment and fullfillment in it. as long as there's improvement, and their will be, things will open up to you and come easier. good luck

Congratulations! Being able to bend to pitch is a hurdle that separates the determined from the non-determined. One thing that you will discover in time is that bending is frequently used to cover the loss of the 2nd and 6th scale degrees of the natural minor scale when using the minor pentatonic scale.

Let's use key of Bm in this discussion because I have graphics drawn for the Bm pentatonic and Bm diatonic scales.

Here's the most common pattern for Bm pentatonic (5-note scale) with the scale degrees numbered:

Did you notice that there are no dots that contain the numbers 2 or 6 on the diagram shown above? If we add the 2nd and 6th scale degrees to the pentatonic minor scale, we get the natural diatonic (7-note) minor scale for B.

Here's the most common pattern for Bm pentatonic with the 2nd and 6th scale degrees added to make Bm diatonic:

Now, let's look at the chord tones in a i, iv, v (a.k.a. 1, 4, 5) progression in the key of Bm. The 1 chord is Bm. The 4 chord is Em, and the 5 chord is F#m.

A very common soloing technique is known as chord tone soloing. In chord tone soloing, solos are built around the notes in each chord. We can add scale degrees outside of the chord tones, but the chord tones should remain the musical centers for each phrase. The problem with the 4 and 5 chords is that two of the chord tones are missing from the minor pentatonic scale. Here's where bending comes into play. We can bend the notes numbered 5 up a half step to pick up of the sixth scale degree on the 4 chord (another common technique is to slide from the 5th into the 6th of the natural minor diatonic scale). When playing the 5 chord, we can bend the notes numbered 1 up a whole step to pick up the 2th scale degree.

An incredibly common introductory phrase for solos in rock and the blues is the following sequence:

4th scale degree on the third string

1st scale degree on the 1st string,

5th scale degree on the 2nd string

7th scale degree on the 2nd string

Bend the 7th scale degree up to the 1st scale degree pitch

The phrase outlined above works because the turnaround sequence in most 1, 4, 5 progressions ends on the 4 chord. The 4th scale degree is struck on the trailing edge of the last beat of the 4 chord with the 1st scale degree being struck on the first beat of the 1-chord is stuck. There is also a very common variation of this phrase in which the 4th scale degree on the 3rd string is bent up to the 5th scale degree through the blue note (which is technically a sharpened 4th scale degree or a flattened 5th scale degree). This phrase is used by all three of the Yardbird triplets (i.e., Eric, Jeff, and Jimmy).

With the above said, the music theory outlined above is merely a starting point. One should use it to understand why certain licks and phrases sound good. There is no replacement for feel, and feel only comes from practice, which is something that I do far too infrequently these days.

Em7 - I'd tripped across some talk of playing "arpeggiated chord patterns as leads". If I understand you correctly - is that the same as "chord tone soloing" ?

A couple of weeks back I learned something I had not really thought about regarding arpeggios - playing legato up and down the neck to get the notes rather than just holding the chord and picking out the notes.

SO now I need to learn Scales AND Arpeggios! ...I'm hoping the arpeggios fall into moving patterns like chords and scales SO MUCH to learn!

Oh and I'm LEARNING to bend to pitch... that seems to be a skill that is going to take a lot of work to do it on demand. It's nice when you can get an octive of the note going and just bend to that! ( cheating? )

Also it looks like the Diatonic gives you more opportunities for several notes on a string with one grip... I see guys and have seen lessons for "3 on a string" scales. It looked useful for playing notes more efficiently - more notes available with less movement.

Em7 - I'd tripped across some talk of playing "arpeggiated chord patterns as leads". If I understand you correctly - is that the same as "chord tone soloing" ?

While arpeggios can be used in chord tone solos, chord tone soloing encompasses more than just playing the notes of each chord in a pattern. The goal of chord tone soloing is to produce a melody line that follows the chord progression. A good example of chord tone soloing is the solo to the tune "Comfortably Numb." In fact, one of attributes that separates David Gilmour from the rest of the pack is that almost all of his solos are chord tone solos.

With that said, as Mikegarveyblues mentioned above, the natural minor scale is also known as Aeolian mode. Aeolian mode is the 6th scale degree of the diatonic major scale, which is also known as Ionian mode. We all learned the major scale as children. It is the scale that sounds like do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. The natural minor scale (a.k.a. Aeolian mode) starts on la, which means that it sounds like la, ti, do, re, mi, fa, sol, la. Both of these scales are diatonic scales. A diatonic scale has seven unique notes.

If one can only learn two diatonic scales, they should be Aeolian mode and Ionian mode because they are the two most frequently encountered scales in modern popular music. Every song has a major and a relative minor key. On guitar, the root note for the relative minor key of a major key can be found by moving three frets down on the fingerboard from the root note of the major key. Conversely, the relative major key of a minor key is three frets up from the root note of the minor key.

Here is the pattern for D major (a.k.a. D Ionian mode):

Hopefully, you noticed that the notes for D major as are the same notes that are in B minor. The only difference is where each scale degree resides in the pattern.

Most guitarists are unaware that there is a major pentatonic scale because most rock guitarists only know the minor pentatonic scale. Bm and D major pentatonic share the same notes. However, like D major, the scales degrees fall in difference places within the pattern.

Anyone who has ever tried to play D major pentatonic over a D major chord progression has quickly learned that the stock minor pentatonic phrases do not work. The 2nd and the 6th scale degrees from the natural minor scale are missing from the minor pentatonic scale whereas the 4th and 7th scale degrees of the major scale are missing from the major pentatonic scale. Plus, the chord tones are in different places in the pattern.

Now, let's look at the chord tones in a I, IV, V (a.k.a. 1, 4, 5) progression in the key of D (uppercase Roman numerals are used to denote major chords). The 1 chord is D. The 4 chord is G, and the 5 chord is A.

Very rich post, I'm working on digesting it.
I did go listen to Comfortably Numb - Live in Gdansk - The first solo from 2:05 to 2:35, I take it that's an example? I'll go learn the chord progression so I can listen for how the solo relates to the chords.

Let me testing for understanding - in D major the relative minor would be B, the scale degree #6 of D - Low E, 7th fret, 3 frets down from the D?
and to construct a chord tone solo for that pattern one would look to play patterns using #1, #3 and #5 where the implied chord tone D. Playing Rhythm you would want to be playing D behind this part of the solo? Same for the IV chord and the V chord?

THANK YOU for the post.

I'm like a sponge trying to soak this up... At this point the visual would be me the sponge being skipped down the sidewalk by a fire hose!

Awesome summary of a logical approach. I like to use the CAGED approach (at least conceptually).... The C, A, G, E and D chords are the five true open chords in which you can use the notes for each of these patterns straight down the neck. As an example, on the fifth fret, the notes from the above chord pattern become the basis for the D, B, A, F#, E major scale and so on. The same logic applies for the minor versions of these chords.

Let me testing for understanding - in D major the relative minor would be B, the scale degree #6 of D - Low E, 7th fret, 3 frets down from the D?
and to construct a chord tone solo for that pattern one would look to play patterns using #1, #3 and #5 where the implied chord tone D. Playing Rhythm you would want to be playing D behind this part of the solo? Same for the IV chord and the V chord?

Yes, the chord tones follow the progression. If one listens closely to chord tone solos, one begins to notice that the phrases are centered on the root notes of the chords. Most guitar solos also start and end on the root note (a.k.a. the tonic) of the key in which a song is written.

I wouldn't worry about the major diatonic and pentatonic scales at this point because the majority of the rock and blues tunes that you will encounter are written in minor keys or played with root 5 chords (e.g. B5, E5, F#5). A root 5 chord (a.k.a. a power chord) contains only a root note and a perfect 5th interval note. As the 3rd interval determines if a chord is a major or a minor chord, a root 5 chord lacks major/minor tonality; therefore, one can improvise using the parallel major and minor diatonic and pentatonic scales over a root 5 progression.

In the case where a song is written in a major key, one can get away with improvising in the parallel minor key using the minor pentatonic scale (e.g., Bm pentatonic over a B major progression) as long as one is careful with the notes numbered 3 and 7. These notes are one half step up in frequency in the major scale (see below). Not adjusting for this difference is one of the most common mistakes that beginning lead guitarists make when improvising using a parallel minor pentatonic scale over a major chord progression. These notes stick out like sore thumbs because they make the soloist sound like he/she is out of key.

Basic Scale Theory

Many of the members of the PRS Forum may already know some of this information. Please bear with me as I cover theory that you already know.

The fundamental scale in western music is the chromatic scale. The chromatic scale contains twelve notes. We start counting over again from one after we get to note number twelve. This distance is known as an octave. The 12th fret on a guitar is one octave up from the nut. The 24th fret on a guitar is two octaves up from the nut.

Other scales are created by applying interval patterns to the chromatic scale. An interval is the distance between the two notes in a scale (usually measured from the root note). In the case of a diatonic scale, we have seven notes; therefore, we have seven intervals between a scale's root note and the root note one octave higher in frequency. The intervals from the root note in a octave are numbered two through eight, with interval number eight being one octave up from the root (the word octave is derived from the Latin word octo, which means eight) . The interval pattern for a major scale is WWHWWWH, where the letter W denotes a whole step (two frets up) and the letter H denotes a half step (one fret up).

The twelve notes in B chromatic are B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, and A#. If we apply the pattern WWHWWWH to B chromatic, we get the notes in the B major scale.

Finally, the chromatic scale for any given key contains the same twelve notes as B chromatic. The only difference is the starting note. For example, E chromatic contains the notes E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B, C, C#, D, and D#.

For the computer scientists and computer engineers on the forum, deriving any chromatic scale from another chromatic scale involves little more than a circular shift operation that places the root note of the key in ordinal position 0 within the ordered set. Additionally, in chords such as Em7add11, the mathematical relationship between the "add" portion of the chord and the base chord is the interval number of the note being added modulo seven. For example, 11 mod 7 = 4, which means that we are adding a fourth interval note to the chord. However, because the number is greater seven, we know that the note is in another octave. We determine the octave in relationship to the root note in which the note to be added occurs by computing the integer quotient of the number divided by seven. In this case, the integer quotient of 11 div 7 = 1 (where div denotes integer division), which means that we are adding the 4th interval note one octave above the root note to the chord.

Finally, a common chord that all rockers will encounter is E7#9 (a.k.a. the "Purple Haze" chord). E7#9 is composed of an E7 chord plus a sharp 9th interval. E7 is a what is known as a dominant seventh chord. A dominant seventh is a major chord plus a minor seventh interval. The fact that nine is greater than seven tells us that the sharp 9th note is at least one octave up from the root note. Applying modulo 7 to 9 yields 2. Because the note is a sharp 9th, it is a really a minor third one octave up. In essence, E7#9 gives us E7 (major-minor) and Em7 (minor-minor) tonality because the chord contains major and minor thirds.

Awesome summary of a logical approach. I like to use the CAGED approach (at least conceptually).... The C, A, G, E and D chords are the five true open chords in which you can use the notes for each of these patterns straight down the neck. As an example, on the fifth fret, the notes from the above chord pattern become the basis for the D, B, A, F#, E major scale and so on. The same logic applies for the minor versions of these chords.

I just decided to start working on the chops again after years (and years) of not really practicing. I decided to grab a few new books as I had in mind what I wanted to learn. One of the books I grabbed was "The CAGED System & 100 Licks for Blues Guitar" by Joseph Alexander. I think it was printed last year. $15 on amazon and there are downloads for all of the techniques. What's cool is that there's backing tracks along with the particular technique. So you can go along very easily and it's being shown in context. I also grabbed "Complete Technique for Modern Guitar" by the same author, same price and same deal. It's geared more towards a more contemporary approach with arpeggio studies, legato, etc.

Congrats to Rango for the step to the next level! Always feels sooo good

Awesome summary of a logical approach. I like to use the CAGED approach (at least conceptually).... The C, A, G, E and D chords are the five true open chords in which you can use the notes for each of these patterns straight down the neck. As an example, on the fifth fret, the notes from the above chord pattern become the basis for the D, B, A, F#, E major scale and so on. The same logic applies for the minor versions of these chords.

I like the CAGED system; however, I have found that it often leaves guitarists with more questions than answers. It's kind of akin to teaching caclulus before teaching algebra and basic arithmetic. Anyone who has taken calculus knows that calculus is a fairly straight forward. What makes calculus difficult are the algebraic manipulations that one must perform in order to apply the rules.

A major flaw that I see with the CAGED system is that it does not really address minor chords and modes, which are the backbone of rock and blues. While we can go through the exercise of mapping the open chord shapes for Cm, Am, Gm, Em, and Dm to the neck, it is a painfully slow way to gain real insight into how notes and chords are laid out on a guitar, and it doesn't teach us a thing about re-voicing chords.

I have lost count of the number of people who I have met that are reasonably good guitarists who do not instantly recognize that the progression Em, Am, Bm is the relative minor 1, 4, 5 chord progression for the major 1, 4, 5 chord progression G. C, and D. These two progressions occur in rock more often than any other progression (the chords are often tuned down half a step to Ebm, Abm, Bbm, and Gb, Cb, Db). The CAGED system does not address this problem, which is why it is akin to attempting to teach calculus before teaching algebra and basic arithmetic.

Let's apply the information given for the key of Bm/D to the key of Em/G. Applying the three frets down the from the major key root note technique that I outlined above to the key of G yields the note E, which means that E minor (a.k.a. Em) is the relative minor key of G major (a.k.a. G). As the relative minor/major pattern shown above is mappable to any key, all we need to do is to move the pattern such that the first note in the pattern on string number 6 is the root note of the relative minor key. The note E appears in two places on string 6 on a 22-fret guitar and three places on a 24-fret guitar (the pattern spans six frets; therefore, we can only map it to two different places on a 24-fret neck). The first E note is the string played open. The second E note is fretted at the 12th fret; therefore, we can play the natural minor/relative major pattern between the nut and the 5th fret and the 12th and the 17th fret in the key of Em/G.

E natural minor

G major

Let's add a new mode and pattern to the mix that allows one to really pump out notes once mastered. Five frets down from the relative minor root note or four frets up from the relative major root note lies the root for a related scale known as Phrygian mode. Phrygian mode is also a minor mode. In our case, we are going to look at B Phrygian because B Phrygian contains the same notes as E minor and G major. The pattern that I use for B Phrygian can also be played in two different places on the neck; namely, between the 7th and 12th frets and the 19th and the 24th frets (one must own a 24 fret guitar to play the extended portion of B Phyrgian). The Phrygian pattern can be looked at as the natural minor pattern with a lowered 2nd scale degree. Lowering the 2nd makes the pattern tidy because one can play two full octaves using four fingers without having to slide or reach for the 2nd.

B Phrygian

Hopefully, forum members have noticed that we can cover almost the entire fingerboard using just two slightly different patterns. These two patterns are relatively easy to commit to muscle memory, which is what one has to do in order to play with any kind of speed.

One last thing: people who are following this thread should try playing the B Phrygian pattern from B to B (note number 1 in the Phrygian pattern) over an Em, D, C, Bm (or B7) progression. One will quickly learn why Phrygian mode is really cool. Al DiMeola is a heavy user of Phrygian mode (the chord progression is basically the primary strummed sequence in the song "Mediterranean Sundance"). Phrygian mode is often called the Flamenco scale. The key here is to play the chord progression with a Flamenco feel while ensuring that the B notes in the scale are played against the Em chord.